I just posted two long pieces of info from the Encyclopedia of Sociology. They're long and wordy but have some good info. I think it just comes down to mind control, our friends and family have falling into a terrible trap.

The basics of group ming control:

* (1) control of communication,* (2) emotional and behavioral manipulation,* (3) demands for absolute conformity to behavior prescriptions derived from the ideology,* (4) obsessive demands for confession,* (5) agreement that the ideology is faultless,* (6) manipulation of language in which cliches substitute for analytic thought,* (7) reinterpretation of human experience and emotion in terms of doctrine,and* (8) classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior and not worthy of respect (Lifton 1961, pp. 419-437, 1987).

Number 6 is important to me. I think a weak intellect is willing to substitute cliches for thought, all they need is permission from their all-powerful leader, which they have. The leader is the LGAT and it's false promises of enlightenment.

Also this statement was important:The programs are, however, impressive in their ability to prepare targets for integration into and long-term participation in the organizations that operate them. Rather than assuming that individual belief change is the major goal of these programs, it is perhaps more productive to view the programs as elaborate role-training regimes. That is, as resocialization programs in which targets are being prepared to conduct themselves in a fashion appropriate for the social roles they are expected to occupy following conclusion of the training process.

In other words, it's not about changing your life for the better, really. It's about making you someone who will stick with our group and try to get more people in. So we kill rational thought and keep you addicted to the highs we know how to create for you.

In part Two is says:Initial focus on personal failures, guilt-laden memories, and unfulfilled aspirations shifted to the opportunity to realize infantile desires and idealistic goals, by affiliating with the group and its mission to save the world.

I think this is important as well, and I cringe to think of some of the very infantile desires my ex shared with me right before he went to Landmark. It's sort of terrifying to think that, instead of helping him to overcome or integrate these desires meaningfully, they might exacerbate them by justifying them. I'm not sure how it will play out for him.

I still keep warning him, I email him every day, but he doesn't respond.

Now I'm just writing for my own catharsis. It's one in the morning and this has been going on for two weeks straight and I'm finally realizing that if I don't step away from the computer and let go of this situation I'm going to be in need of some mental help myself.

I think I've read everything there is to read on Landmark. I've read all about mind control, hypnosis, cults. I understand now.

I thought the wound in my heart from our break up was starting to heal, but it opened up fresh tonight. I miss him. But I can't talk to him if he's going to tell me how he now sees how to live, how he needs Landmark and I do too . . .

My emotions swing wildly. I'm furious with him, I'm heart broken, I'm worried for his sanity. He might be in the Advanced Course now, being hypnotized and fucked with emotionally, after not having had a decent night's sleep for months. If he doesn't crack it will be a miracle.

Then I imagine him coming out blissful and even further converted, and worse, I imagine him meeting a new woman through Landmark, and forgetting about me totally. Or calling me to "complete." And then my heart bleeds all over the desk again and I just lay my head down on it and cry.

So pathetic. I am pathetic. I need to stop and move on.

I don't understand how he could let me go. He doesn't understand why I had to leave as soon as he decided to allow himself to get sucked into Landmark. But the thought of entering Landmarklandia with him is a living hell. Imagine all those ridiculous shallow brainwashed people I'd have to hang out with, telling me to "be in integrity" and all that fucking CRAP. How he can swallow it for a moment is so far beyond me. Who is this man? What became of my love?

This jargon . . . it's a joke. It's a joke to sane people everywhere who don't NEED a $500 course to tell them to have integrity. If you didn't have it before, you think you're going to get it in a weekend?? -- and even better, from people who don't HAVE enough integrity to NOT take your hard earned money just to tell you should have integrity!!!

I've often had a certain detachment from life. It's odd, but true. Part of me has always been a little removed. This isn't bad. It's held me together. But this pain I've been going through is cutting through any barriers I have, any sense of detachment. I'm just raw and bleeding, and no one can help, and that's it.

This experience is going to make it a little hard to trust again. I'm going to have to know a man a long, long time before I decide to do something as radical as move to NYC and move in with him. Which I was just about to do.

LGATs find the fault lines in our friends and families and set off explosives all along them.

Most people would be emotionally bombed out from this (as you are) but accept what life has dealt them and continued to suffer. You, on the other hand, have gone the extra mile and researched and read widely on this thing that has blighted your lives. You're like the parents in Lorenzo's Oil who doesn't accept things as they are and goes well beyond the extra mile for someone you care about. You are in fact so very precious. If only there were more like you.

Hang in there because it's going to take a while. Pace yourself like this is a serious marathon that you have started running. We can't have such a good person burning out and falling to the side. You're too precious to lose.

They found some weakness in his defense system and bored their way in. That's how they do it. They are like an infection or some sneaky parasite in that regard. Worst thing is that their breach requires collusion -- he invited them in. It's the ongoing collusion that gets you, watching the thing happen. He should have been ruled out at the outset, with his history. Did he really get a doctor's note to allow him in?

I think you have to look at it like some sort of disease or mental illness, even -- one that's repulsive, errosive, and contagious. One he may or may not get over, but one in which he has to do the major portion of the recovery if it is to happen.

They've probably convinced him that you are a "suppressive," or whatever jargon word they use instead. They've probably convinced him you are not really interested in his best interests, only your own and your ability to control him for your benefit. At some point in the "programming," they seed the Landmarkian message that "it's a dog-eat-dog world" and everyone is only out for himself, "there are no victims," "victims create their own victimhood," and other such nonsense ideas.

you have suffered 2 traumas in one go - loss of your boyfriend and the "awakening" about mindcontrolling "businesses" at the same time.

My best advice would be to take a break from it all and find a few things you could do to start the healing process. To try to convince you ex about landmark's evil nature will be very very stressful because it is like talking to a robot.

He may come around after a while but when somebody has bought the package as he has (I did the same thing) it takes time to accept for the mindcontrollee that he has been manipulated.

When you are in the middle of the coursework you are not willing to accept that the ideas you have "learned" might be lousy ideas.

But the courses have some useful ways of looking at life but when you apply them all you become a selfcentered egotistical forumrobot unfortunately. The top leaders are the worst kind - they seem to be superhumans but really their powers are only useful within the organization itself. They tell you that if you leave landmark your life will go back to the way it was before. If an individual has experienced a rise in selfesteem (imagined or not) you become fearful of losing that boost. Landmark threaten you with all kind of mental viruses that tend to go into your brain through all your filters.

But to end on a postive note - lots and lots of people have left landmark and regained their old selves and leaving their robotlike behaviour and speech behind them. I did. Most of the people I knew back then (landmarkrobots) have left and are quite OK.

Thank you for all your concern and support. I think I hit a wall last night and realized I really am driving myself nuts with this. I'm going to a museum today, I think there's still a world outside . . .

I emailed him last night and told him to please just let me know he's okay. He's doing the Advanced Course right now, I think, because he's not home all day until 1 am. He emailed at 1:30 am and said he was okay and would write soon. So it was good to hear from him anyway.

I think the hardest part for me is that I've been seeing him as two different people. The strong man I thought he was, who loved me completely and wanted me and cared about me and would never let me go. Then he became this other very scared and insecure man who got suckered into Landmark by someone who DOESN'T love him, doesn't care at all, she's paid to give advice, and she's a "Lekkie."

I got very angry about all this. My feelings about "est" were already fully formed and very strong. I got disgusted with him for even considering it, and for refusing to read everything I sent him. So of course this reaction of mine just pushed him even further away.

Now that I know there's no going back to how things used to be, and my illusions about who he is, and I've dealt with the pain of that, I feel like I just need to let him know I love him and hope that he will stop taking these courses. I'm just concerned for his health and sanity now.

Nettie, I'm not so sure what, if anything, about these courses is really helpful. I can see using related trainings in a corporate setting, where life really IS black and white, and the business is not running like it should be. I was reading about how "est" type boot-camp trainings are used this way, and though I still think it's insane, at least it makes a bit more sense in the corporate environment.

But of course life itself, interpersonal realities, emotions etc, are far more complex than what these courses can grasp., and from everything I've read about the "teaching," I think it's harmful because it's either obscenely simplistic or just plain wrong.

What the hell gives these untrained ego maniacs the right to tell people what the "truth" is? How do they know life is meaningless and empty? How do they know that people create their own reality? They don't know this. They might want to think it's true, but they don't KNOW. The New Age is overflowing with assholes who claim to "know."

Listen, until you part the Red Seas, walk on water or turn water into wine, I ain't buyin your story. Espcially not while you're picking my pocket.

Group hypnosis, ego deconstruction and the implantation of unrealistic but compelling ideas, lead people to states of euphoria that are unsustainable and ultimately confusing or destabilizing. And if they're NOT, that means you're lacking some very basic critical thinking skills.

I spent a lot of my teenage years doing LSD. I went to Grateful Dead shows and Rainbow Gatherings. I've taken so much acid I was once nearly hospitalized for it. I suffered, essentially, a psychotic break. Thankfully my father would not let me be taken to a hospital, he knew I'd come out of it once the drug wore off, and I did.

However, the lasting effects of that experience took years to overcome. Finally I found a book called "The Seduction of Madness." I read it cover to cover and after that I was finally healed. Information is powerful, and this book explained a lot about how the mind works and how it can become very, very confused.

I'm going to take a little break from all of this today, but I'm not done with LGATs yet. I'm pissed off, and I want to be part of some kind of awareness movement. People NEED to know about these groups, what they teach, what the dangers are. And how Dr. Evil, Mr.Erhard, is still behind it all, laughing and raking in the bucks.

QuotevlindenWhat the hell gives these untrained ego maniacs the right to tell people what the "truth" is? How do they know life is meaningless and empty? How do they know that people create their own reality? They don't know this. They might want to think it's true, but they don't KNOW. The New Age is overflowing with assholes who claim to "know."

Ya know, from everything I know about the lgat scam-business, the leaders don't believe what they teach and they don't really care what they teach, so long as it *looks* like something important or profound. Lgats want to accomplish only ONE thing: more $$$$ for the leaders. The "teachings" are used so that it appears you're getting something (in lgats, all is illusion, all is a LIE). The programs have but one purpose: to send the programmed worker ants out into their circle of families, friends, workplaces and recruit, recruit, recruit. One trick to accomplish this is to make the worker ant (and hopefully a hard working, self-sacrificing one) believe s/he actually gained something significant (such as enlightenment), thus the ant-slave will "willingly" set about to change the world, one friend at a time. There are no teachings, it's yet another part of the cruel hoax. It only appears that there are teachings.

P.S. This may sound cynical, even black and white, but the more I look into lgats and reflect on my six years involvement, I don't think there is one single thing about them that is genuine, true or honest.

I think they are scam and lies through and through, to their very core, starting at the top with the leader/founder itself. (yes, ITself!)

If something seems useful or is valid in a certain field of study, it's not presented in an lgat in either vein. If something real is gained it's only incidental, and not at all by design.

I just got into contact with my ex, who thank god has not taken the Advanced Course at Landmark yet. It's not until the end of the month, and I'm going to try to talk him out of it. I've decided the most important thing is saving him from this, and I can get past my pain and anger enough to try.

I've asked him to call me tonight, and I'm just going engage him dialogue about Landmark. I'm not going to attack him or even assert much of anything to him. I'm going to ask him questions, and support him in the process of critical thinking about what he's learning and experiencing there.

I already chatted with him online today, and it's exactly as I thought it would be. They've put him through an emotionally overwhelming experience, helped him to see his past self as very fucked up and, as he said, "dead," implanted him with all sorts of thoughts he now thinks are his own.

And he's now "committed" to their impossible course of action, which is to maintain a connection to that altered state he achieved through mind control and psychological breakdown, then live like a Landmark robot and believe the new things they've taught him, which don't jibe with his existing beliefs, so he's already having a hard time doing it. Of course this will be a feedback loop where he'll blame himself for not "getting it" and feel even worse about himself.

He told me he's having a hard time always being "in the moment." I told him that's because no one can maintain that state all the time. I asked him what he meant by being in the moment, and though he could hardly articulate it, it basically amounts to abandoning your critical thinking, your past knowledge and understanding, and replacing it with, again, a somewhat altered state of consciousness, maybe a more right-brained, alpha state of receptivity.

Of course, we need both our right and left brains, our critical thinking, our humanity, and even our judgments in order to be really human.

My ex, I can tell, is stressed about not being able to maintain this vague "being in the moment" state. He also said that he's having a hard time remembering that all that "other stuff" (meaning, him) is just the "machinery of my brain" and "not him."

I asked him if he thinks he is separate from the workings of his brain?

He said no.

Then he said he thought it was something like the right brain separating from the left . . . it was very vague. Certainly we don't want to experience life through only side of our brain or another, even if it was possible, which it isn't.

So I can see he's confused, but of course he's shelled out the $850 for the next load of brainwashing in hopes he'll "get it" even more. Yeah, he'll get it alright.

I'm going to hold his hand through this and hope that he will feel in my grip the strength of reality, sanity, and love despite all that he has put me through, despite all his flaws, his past, his humanity. I hope I can pull him out of this.

One suggestion could be to ask him if he could postpone his advanced course so he can sort out what he has been through. Landmark will try to hang COMMITMENT on him to avoid him postponing. Tell him to respond by saying;I CHOOSE TO WAIT - I am still committed to doing the course.

To fight back against landmark you have to speak back with their own language - then they stand dumbfounded - but they are trained in finding a hook too keep you taking courses, signing up NOW.

About being here and now, in the moment. It is hard - but during the forum course you get on o high that makes you feel all powerful and in the moment - but confused. Confusion is a desired state for landmark. They will tell you that more training will make it more clear. But the next course will make you even more confused. Landmark will tell you that by sharing your experience you will understand what you have learned. But you will get even more confused as people react to what you are saying. For landmark this is perfect. They know that forum graduates want their friends to JUST DO IT. Then the 2 friends can talk the same language and become forum robots together.

To be here and now - in the moment - is trained best through Mindfullness excersises.